Category: Critical Analysis of Current knowledge

I started looking at and reading the book Beauty Sick by Renee Engeln, Phd after a talk with one of my experts, who is one of the founders of a therapy-led approach group in Colombia called El Cuerpo Que Somos. They started this initiative around ten years ago, and they have therapy groups for extended periods of time as their treatment. I started doing this this week, which I am really excited about, because they talk about and analyze everything around body image and the obsession with looking a certain way. They recommended I read this book for my thesis as well as for my journey in their therapy group. 

The book starts with a critical introduction to beauty and the industry, and how we are never satisfied with what we see in the mirror because we are obsessed with the media and trying to emulate what we see in our actual lives. There is always this idea in our lives that there is something that needs to change and that we look great, but I should fix this one small thing or another. She started her career and began learning more about women’s psychology. She saw that women sometimes stopped living or constantly criticized themselves because of how they looked and how other people perceived them. (I believe this is definitely a reality from all the sources I have interacted with, but as the book says later on, there isn’t enough research on people who actually feel good in their bodies; it is mostly about women who suffer from beauty sickness.) 

Thought the book there is a lot of talk surrounding the mirror and it is seen even in the cover of the book having there be a broken mirror this is a book that is really interesting and entertaining to read which makes me think of the fact that most women should give it a read since it takes on a very particular style where there is a lot of research and numbers, “34% of five-year-old girls do dietary restriction, and 28% of this group of girls want their body to look like the people who are on TV.”(pg.3) and there are many phrases and numbers such as this throughout the book but it does bring sort of a novel aspect to it as well as the author chose to describe conversations with women who had suffered from beauty sickness and how this was something that looked different for all women and everyone had their own experience which made it easier to read than most academic books in my opinion and easier to understand since it was as if they were telling a story I think this makes it easier for the average audience to engage with because it is not just information getting thrown at you but you have something that you are able to follow and characters you are able to relate to. 

One of the main discussions in the book is that we have created an environment where being beautiful, and being perceived as beautiful, means you have power. If I seem smaller than the rest and have a more beautiful face, then that means I am superior to others, and based on what we see in the media and the outside world, we have also made it impossible for people who live in bigger cities to be seen as beautiful. The first example of someone with body image issues in the book is a young girl named Leigh. Clearly, the researcher also had the parents’ consent for their child to participate in this research. When she was asked what she thought was beautiful, she said that it was having thin body parts: “beauty could be captured via a series of measurements”(pg.4). There is a lot of talk in the book throughout about the fact that women live in the forms of others and start to internalize that people are looking at them. This is what gives them value, and it is something we don’t come out of the womb with; we learn it as we grow up, shaped by the society we are in. 

There were a lot of examples all through the book about how some women started to get beauty sick based on how they saw their elders and especially their mothers have a relationship with their bodies for example if a girls mother was always critiquing her body and being her clothing that does not fit her but would fit her at her ideal weight it would make their daughter think about how their body is not correct and something that they have to keep on changing, this is something that we see all of the time and it is something that we see of a lot on tv as well as in the media as a whole for example women showing their bodies in instagram with their size xxc skirt when it did not kit them. Then, a couple of months later, it fit her, which only proves the point that smaller is seen as better and something women are always striving for. 

One thing in the book that really emphasized my gap of there not being enough research or enough talk about women in Latin America and body image is the fact that the researcher and author talks about the fact that there are a lot of students that reach out to her about getting information for projects they are doing, but this is mostly in the USA; she does not speak about people from other countries doing so, which is important to note. 

One of the main issues the author notes is that this cultural obsession is not just about one person or one family. Still, it is the fact that as a society we have placed such an emphasis on looks and the media: “signs…thoughts…behaviors… illness also lives in our culture…A beauty-sick culture cares more about an actress’s nude selfie than important world events”(pg. 8). This is something that we have seen recently in different moments; for example, there is the fact that even today there are moments when there are real-world issues happening, but people’s reactions and the importance they put on what models and celebrities are doing is more important. 

One of the main ways in which the author talks about young girls getting into this world is in mother own relationship with their bodies and this is a fear I have heard and seen on social media about people who have suffering through eating disorders and starting a family because they never want to set that example for their children and this is very important because you might think that it is very important to never say anything negative to your child about your body but if you have very strong negative feelings towards your body and this is something your child sees this is something that at some point they are going to start internalizing and start to consider normal for example in this book the author was describing a exercise they did with young girls and their mother looking at themselves in the mirror and then doing it next to their daughters and even though the daughters individually did not have an insecurity about a certain part of their body when they saw their mothers talking negatively about that part of their body they started to think it was normal and since they admire their mother they said the same thing about being uncomfortable with that part of their body. 

One example that the author describes is about the Duchess of Cambridge, Kate, and the way that, because she is in the public eye, her life is always on display for others to see. For example, “One day after Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, gave birth to her first child, she was greeted with a story in the UK tabloid press about how she could lose the baby weight and “shape up.” After delivering her second child, she was widely criticized for looking too good after the birth.”(pg.12) This just shows us that people are always going to look for something to criticize and look at, so even if you do exactly what someone else wants, other people are going to disagree, which makes me think about the fact that you really have to be at peace with yourself and what you are doing because if you decide your life based on what the people around you are thinking, you are never going to get anywhere; you are always going to be trying to please other people and not succeeding at it. 

There is also the fact that she talks about certain eating disorders or forms of disordered eating, including body dysmorphia, “…Body surveillance or body monitoring.”(pg.66) This is something that we see and from speaking to several man I have seen the fact that they say that it is good because it keeps women together and accountable on the way they look however if you are always looking at yourself and criticizing every small flaw that is when there starts to be issues with your time management as well as how you view the world because if your only focus is your body and what your appearance looks to the outer world this takes away from other work and activities you could be taking part in, “The problem with having body on your mind is that it takes your mind away from other things”(pg.69). This is an issue that is similar to a very used term which is food noise which is just the idea that you are always thinking about food and what you are going to eat next and your whole life revolves around it when there are so many other things one could live for. 

There is this wrong image at times, not just of the males around us and the people around us but of ourselves, of thinking there are certain areas that we don’t like about our body that we can change without affecting our health or how anything else in our bodies looks: “‘They had gone through and created a perfect female by taking segments of each girl that they thought won a category. So this person’s face, this person’s chest. And then he told me I had won the torso, which was the abdomen and butt’”(pg.71). How was it okay for people to be taking women’s parts of their bodies an acting as if they could build the perfect woman as if it were that way it could be done the other way around of just saying that men could change this or that about themselves but in reality it is important to look at people as a whole and not just at the specific part about them that you like. 

““She said my face was so fat, who would ever be attracted to me? They were always commenting on what I was eating. I would counter with ‘People should like me for what I am. People should like me for what’s on the inside.’ But it was just this constant barrage of shit about my appearance.””(pg.93) If not even your parents love you just the way you are and are always commenting on your body and your appearance, you are going to believe you are not truly worthy of love. Why was it important to look attractive for a man, as if they needed to make sure they looked pretty for a man and future people who might be attracted to them, as if that was where their worth went??

I think that this book is a hard read because it really makes you think about your own relationship with your body and how body-sick you might be. Still, it is important because it is showing us the reality and the critique of something we have normalized so much that we don’t even question it anymore, one of the main steps that the book talks about is about how we need to critique better what is going on around us so that we know how to avoid it, the book really looks at the reality of not asking women to not participate in their beauty rituals if you feel happy to be doing your make up then that great but don’t critique other when they are not constantly fixing their make up and don’t make it an expectation for example give young girls different gifts instead of just asking them to play with make up and nail products give them other things they can play with and develop their personality around. 

• This is a TEDx talk by one of Colombia’s fat activists, Adriana, but on social media she’s known as Fat Pandora. She has a very interesting story and take on fat phobia in Colombia, and I thought this was a great talk to watch and include in my blog. 
• The talk began with the interviewee talking about how she came to know Fat Pandora from an article she read in a newspaper, and it started with a quote that she gave, which roughly translated, since it was done in Spanish, was, “I am Fat, I dress incredibly, and I will not hide”
• They describe how it seems as if we live in a world that accepts body diversity, with concepts such as body positivity and size models. Adriana normally speaks about these subjects, as well as aesthetic violence and body violence. 
• She was asked how her experience has been, especially now that there is the idea of miracles for losing weight. By listening to this, I am assuming she is asking about using GLP1s as weight loss medication. 
• She speaks about aesthetic violence because she believes there is a misconception that this only involves or affects fat people, but this is something that all women are exposed to. (I can relate this to the book I read about Beauty Sick and how it is something we are just born to face in one way or another) There is constant pressure and watching the body to get close to the body standard society has; in that moment, the more you fall out of this and don’t follow or try to achieve this ideal, you are more exposed to violence. You lose privilege, and this is a type of prejudice. You lose privileges and are discriminated against because of how you look. 
• Fatphobia and aesthetic discrimination almost always go hand in hand, and they are almost sisters. She comes from Bucaramanga, and her mother was a designer, so from a young age she went to buy textiles. Still, she remembers every time they would leave the house, someone would comment on Adriana’s body to her mom; a very common one in Colombia is, “you can tell that she eats her soup,” which means that she is eating more than she should because she is on the fatter side of the spectrum. Since she was young, she did not think this was bad, and her mother told her that they were telling her she was fat. That phrase marked her life, and it shows how children can internalize what they think is helpful. 
• She found her place in the fashion space, having seen her mother as a designer and her father as someone who always wanted to look amazing in his clothing. As a fat woman, or just a woman in general, she learned to figure it out; however, when she went to study marketing and fashion communication in Bogotá, she studied with other girls who looked like what the industry had told us was acceptable, sort of like the actresses in The Devil Wears Prada. She started to think about how she wanted to look this way. She started saying she couldn’t be the only fat Colombian to want to buy fashionable clothing, and she looked at the bigger-size industry in the USA, China, and Germany, where there was an offer for this. Hence, she started saying she bought these clothes from these brands, but she understood this was her position of privilege because she had the means to buy them. 
• She started a blog and took pictures in the clothes she bought. There are fat women in Colombia, and she wanted to prove that they existed. 
• She called her blog Fat Pandora because she has always liked being disobedient; she found ways to compensate for being fat and admired the myth of Pandora. 
• The fashion industry is a Machiavellian plan because they put the seed for insecurities; for example, the thigh gap, and a lot of girls fall into eating disorders, and then creams and then machines started to come out to make it better. They invented the idea that it is bad to have your hip bones stick out, and at one point they started saying freckles weren’t good, and everyone was crazy about covering them up; but now that they are in fashion, they sell you a pen that draws them in for you. 
• Medicine that we don’t know about to lose weight; everyone is very thin right now and following this trend, but in reality it goes much deeper when you get a doctor, and you tell them that you don’t feel well, but they tell you that you are thin, so that must mean there is nothing wrong. (I actually have a friend who has PCOS and was told that since she was not fat, then it was not a problem, but in reality there are so many underlying issues that come with this that we don’t even realize). There is hypervigilance about women’s bodies. 
• One of Adriana’s friends, who is super thin, told her that she was a victim of medical fat phobia and said that she has biomass. She is going to have to get surgery, but they had never examined her for complete tests, and now that she is getting surgery, they will. They saw that she has cholesterol problems, but if it had not been for her surgery, no doctor would have ever found it necessary to do this test because of how she looks. There, she saw the idea that there is this stereotype that if you are fat, it means unhealthy, and thin means healthy; it affects both sides of the spectrum. 
• Pathologizing a body by just seeing it brings a lot of problems to fat people. She has her story with Ozempic, but a different one, and a doctor sent it to her. She started using it, and a few weeks later, the voice of reason, and she heard a third voice of What if we die, and she asked the doctor. She said that there is a percentage of people who can develop suicidal thoughts because of this medication, and she stopped taking this medication. A couple of years later, it came out that this is a problem and a consequence and causes depression and has effects on mental health. This fears the idea that society would rather see us dead than fat.
• The idea of wanting to lose weight has a lot of effects, and there is research that says that women who are overweight earn less money than those who are not overweight. 
• It looks like the world has changed somewhat because there are more plus-size models, and yes, and no, it is the message of society that you can only look fat if you look a specific kind of fat; there is still diversity with fat bodies, and the model of being more fat as a model does not represent all fat people. She does not think this is a victory to see them on a catwalk because these women are not representing all women, and it is not a victory that they choose fat women as a life-saving measure when they see that they are losing their market. 
• What can we say to people who are still fighting these impossible stereotypes? She says to think about what we would have done with the time that we invest in being self-deprecating and use that time on something different, like working, a hobby, and knowing oneself better instead of trying to fit into less space. Secondly, she wanted to say that fat people are not promoting anything or romanticizing anything; they are just saying they want the same treatment and clothing they can wear they want to be treated with dignity.

While I was walking around Frieze and Frieze Masters today, I ran into a couple of stands with magazines from Harper’s Bazaar Art. I grabbed a couple, and later, when I got home, I started looking for articles that could give me information for my research. I found one called “Bodies of Work,” a curation piece by Jo Baring. The idea of this curation was to look at how women are portrayed, but this has been the subject of a lot of controversy and, at the same time, a lot of empowerment. They start talking about Venus, and when people think about Venus, they probably think about the painting The Birth of Venus or the sculpture that is in the Louver,. Still, people do not realize this was done long before that, and that the way she was imagined was influenced by earlier sculptures such as the Venus of Hohle Fels, discovered in a cave in Germany and believed to be 35,000 years old. In these sculptures, many of them depicted the women’s body in a very realistic way, including the vulva as well as large breasts. When people started to discover some of these pieces in the late 1800s, they began to compare them and say she was an immodest Venus, while European representations were modest. (This makes me think about the fact that they were grabbing something that already existed and someone had created and was the actual women form and something they gathered inspiration from and calling it immodest and as if it had less value. This reminds me of some of my readings about how some bodies are considered immodest, and it is similar to what they were doing around this piece.) The reason why they were considered immodest was that she covered her genitals in the Roman version, but in this one it was all exposed for the world to see. It is suggested that these were pieces done by the women themselves as a form ofself-portraiture (This is something that I find incredible: they were able to depict themselves in the nude and the way they saw themselves then, or even at the time when the Birth of Venus was painted, there was so much taboo over the female body, and even though this is something that is being fought against in society, there are different ways in which we can still see them today.)

Thin Body in Fashion 7 Reasons Why Skinny Became “Fashionable”

I found this article from a company, but I couldn’t find their name on the website; however, I thought it had some really good points and could be beneficial to review as part of my research. I found it on a website called Parametex, which sells different types of fabrics, and I thought the name was super interesting. It is recent, since it was published in April of this year, so it offers a different perspective than older research I have looked at. One of the first things I noticed and found relevant is that “fashionable” is in quotation marks, which makes me think about rules that must be broken and the paradigms and belief systems we live in, so I found it interesting to explore. The first part of the article looks at the beginnings of why the thin body started to be so representative in the fashion industry. This article is different from others I have analyzed because it points to a direct shift in the 1960s, when Twiggy entered the modeling industry. Some claim it started in the 1920s, but researchers have different views on this subject.

The article argues that one of the main things we see in fashion is thin bodies, no matter the context; this is seen across runways, magazines, and campaigns. They say this has been the standard from the start and that it shows how fashion is presented and positioned as a whole. In this article, Twiggy is considered one of the pivotal changes: she came in with her silhouette, made it a standard, and shifted the industry away from emphasizing and celebrating curves toward how clothing and fashion presented themselves. This makes me think that it stopped being so much about the body, which was the focus before, and made it more about the clothing, sort of like saying that the curves were a distraction from the clothing and the clothing needed to be the most interesting and important part of the industry; I think it made women invisible, as if they were the accessory and not the clothing. This is what is described next by saying, “the clothing is always the main focus.” It also suggests that, to do this, some people think the best way is through thin bodies; however, this is because it is “original to the design intention.” However, this makes me think about the fact that the intention is made from the beginning of the design, which is the silhouette they design, which means that if we change the process from the rule, or this is my hypothesis, then there could be more change in the fashion industry and the way that the clothing is specifically designed. This isn’t just something that happens; normally, specific fashion lines are produced in very specific sample sizes, which is considered good for speed and organization. Still, for example, if a model does not fit a dress specifically as it is imagined, then they are not right for the dress; there is never consideration that maybe the dress can change, and this is to make the process more efficient, which makes it necessary for models to be in such a small size and always be thin, or they will be taken out of the fashion industry, which tells us that this is the standard. However, this makes me ask the same question: how ethical is this industry, and do they care about the individuals they represent? Because, looking at the media and with my untrained eye, there are women in this industry that look sick from how thin they are, and I understand that there are some people that genetically look like this; however, there are some that need to think about their health and go to extreme measures to be a part of this industry. 

This was made even stronger in the 1990s when models became even smaller, and this is sometimes referred to as heroin chic, and this was made to be a part of fashion identities. Even though it was an issue before, it became much more extreme in this instance. In this era, it became less about the clothing and more about the aesthetic, with models becoming part of it. They wanted models and the fashion industry to be something people aspired to, which raised their standard and led to a hierarchy where thinner was better. This is something that I can connect to the research about fearing the black body, since making women slimmer and making this the standard was a rationalization from racism; they are not on the same level playing field, to say the least, and it is very important to name, but it is a similarity that I find interesting and something to look at further. Since this body type has been so prevalent in the media, it’s important to look at how it shaped people’s perceptions of models and the fashion industry. “What we see repeatedly begins to feel normal…” This makes me think about how many people see models as just beautiful and slim, and it is because the media bombards us with that, which makes us believe it’s normal and something we should aspire to. 

In this article, they discuss how, in recent years, the industry has started to include different body sizes. There is more representation across different forms of media, which is a real change; however, they argue that the default is still very thin, even in high fashion, ps and that these changes take time. However, I disagree with this take because, in the past couple of years, specifically following the Ozempic epidemic and seeing how much worse everything has gotten, we can see that they are going back to that default, and some models look even thinner than they ever had because of this new shift and the fact that this is something you can now buy; it is not accessible, but it is buyable. 

In this article, they argue that the industry’s expansion is not necessarily a replacement for what already existed. Still, it is growing, and more brands offer more inclusive sizing. I believe there is still a lot of work to do in this area; however, this is this writer’s opinion. The way that they are talking about this is to get more consumers: “At this point, material becomes increasingly important. Fabric is no longer just about color or texture, but about how it adapts to different bodies. The way it drapes, moves, and shapes a silhouette becomes part of the fashion experience itself.” After this point, they say they are a company that does this and is part of this shift so that they can have more materials for everyone around them. They claim and believe the industry no longer looks at only one standard; however, I strongly disagree. More people are talking about it, which is good; however, there is still work to be done, especially now that more and more people are taking weight-loss medication. I want to make clear I am not against it when someone needs it; however, there are now people who take advantage of this and make things each time more difficult because it is even an ethical problem: should you take a medication you don’t even really need to fit a standard which has been constructed by society? 

https://www.wearview.co/glossary/croquis

This is a very important word or concept in the fashion industry: the silhouette of the human body in a flat plane, typically for clothing. This relates to what I did with the bodices and asking people what they thought a designer should use to make or design clothing. The word is used worldwide, but it is the French word for sketch. Designers use it so they don’t have to draw a new body every time they have an idea; it is basically a blank mannequin on paper. This normally looks very simple; however, I keep asking myself: how do they decide what a body is supposed to look like, and why t is there a standard they have to follow?. Tfollow?r day I was speaking with a student from another course and when I showed them the papers that I have described in the past with the different shapes of body a designer should design without me even asking her a question she just looked at the page and said that the one on the far left corner at the top was the correct one and that it was because that was what she was taught as a designer and that just made me think about how the industry was built on this idea of a body looking in a certain way with this conclusion I feel as if people who enter the industry get told a rule book. I think it is really hard for these designers to go against that rulebook. The idea behind this design, or the way it is mostly done more stereotypically, is that the proportions are more elongated and very stylized, which makes them not look real. Normally, a regular person’s proportions are 7 heads tall. Still, this designer draws more like 10, and the extra length normally goes to the legs. This is normally considered an industry default because it is believed to make the clothing look better, which is why designers often go for it. I find a lot of problems with this style and this reality in the sense that there is the world style, and that this is meant to be more style-oriented, which I find very interesting and difficult at the same time because this is so subjective: who decides what is considered more stylish and what is not, and if these are not even real people or the interpretations of one, how can people even be expected to design for real people when this is not even what is in mind. 

One reason there are fewer critiques of this is that it is used in the idea stage of design. Then, as designs move forward, they become more accurate in proportion and are used for actual manufacturing; they are the clothing and garments. 

This is a tool designers use to create a good workflow; it helps you put ideas on paper, supports the first sketches, and later becomes a selection process for the best ones and the ones that fit the brand best. (I understand logically that it makes the process easier, but maybe they could have some croquis that could be in different body types that show different representations, maybe doing the same design on the different bodies to show the differences). However, I think there is a science to this being more time-consuming, but it could also mean it is more ethical, and that is also important to consider. 

One piece of advice they give is to pick one and run with it, but like I said, how is that ethical? I have spoken to a couple of designers, and they have all said there is a correct one to use or an industry standard; some designers even say it makes them look better, and that in school they had more success when they used more stylish models. 

In the end, I think this piece is missing information or isn’t very critical because I understand this is part of the industry. Still, there are moments when I think some things should be questioned and looked at differently to see how they could change, because this is something that actually should change. 

https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2015/jan/16/-sp-are-models-too-skinny-the-debate-fashion-has-been-having-since-1900

• This is an article I found online about models and how they are too small and don’t represent everyone. Research. 
• Models and their body size have been something that people have been debating for more than a century, and the argument that exists saying that this is something that affects people’s body image is just as old and prevalent. 
• When the industry took shape, models were called “living mannequins” because they were used as displays in different formats. They were looked at as “animated dolls.” At the time, they were expected to look and act the same, which led to a lot of judgment. “One critic in 1910 described their ‘industrial smiles’” I think this is really hard to judge specifically because this was at a time when women did not have a lot of rights and jobs were very limited, so it was actually a power move that they were able to get this job and make some money for themselves. Hence, I think it is really hard to make these kinds of judgments against these women. However, they took away a lot of their power and autonomy because they were not able to speak unless spoken to, and they would not even have their own identity; their identity would be the one with the name of the dress, which completely stripped them. So while we can’t judge them, we can critique the way they were treated as moving objects. 
• One of the main things to look at is that in the 1900s, women stopped wearing corsets all the time, and they were all slender. Still, none of them reached the level of extreme thinness we see today, but it started changing rapidly as more people got involved in dance and sport. Looking at the dates, I think it might have been when flappers started to appear and began showing their legs and arms. The same problems we see now were also present back then: “Then as now, both journalists and the public complained that models bore no relation to ordinary women.” This is the same critique we see today, which shows this isn’t just something we see now; it started when the industry gained more visibility and models became more common. 
• There was also talk about Arjmand, who was publicized as the thinnest model in the world, and people were scared she was going to break from how thin she was; however, this is not something she, as a model, ever liked. She was always on diets to try to gain weight but was always thin. I think we have to look at this closely because people are criticized for being too thin every day. We see it on a daily basis. I am in no way comparing it to the discrimination that people in bigger bodies face because there is no comparison, and being criticized and being discriminated against are very different things, but being extremely thin is something some people cannot control. I have spoken to people who say that they feel as if they are a part of the problem with fat phobia and the media because they are thin, when in reality there is very little they can actually do about this. It is important to understand this, but also to understand that these are not comparable things. 
• There were also geographical ways to see differences. For example, the fact that in the 1920’s in NYC, the uptown people, which I am guessing are the richest people based on the geography of NYC today, the models were a lot thinner. In contrast, in the southern part of the city, they were more full-figured, and I can even connect this to today because in South American countries, when people are of a lower socioeconomic status, they want to be more full-figured to show they eat and have money for food. Still, people with a higher socioeconomic background often want to be thinner. At the beginning of the use of models, there were a variety of sizes; however, when there started to be more movement and there started to be more standardization, I imagine that this was something that was done as a part of the industry to make things easier for themselves; however, not keeping in mind that they were excluding other people that should be included in conversations and as a part of the industry. 
• “In Paris, Coco Chanel chose models in her own, slender, image, even fitting the fuller-figured ones with a whale-boned brassiere to flatten their bosoms.” This makes me think about ethics and research because, when she was doing this, she thought of herself as the stakeholder and made the product for herself or the form in which she thought the look should be. Still, research and products should never be only for ourselves. It is really interesting how she even went about changing people’s bodies to make sure that they looked the way she intended the clothing to be worn; however, this goes against one of the main principles that I have been researching, which is that you should not change your body to fit a garment but to change the garment. An example I can show you today is about how people have their “skinny jeans or clothing,” and this is for when they reach their goal, and this is replicating this same idea of changing one’s body to fit into an industry standard. 
• This was the trend of having models be “boyish form is passé,” which is that the women that looked less developed or did not have a lot of curves were no longer the beauty standard, which shows us how bodies are now trends that need to be followed and are set by the media industry. Even though this was the standard for so long, there was a story in the press where 200 women lost their jobs for being too thin. This makes me think about the expectation that women fit a thin ideal, how they decided to change that, and how it made people unemployable even though they had been doing and looking within past expectations. 
• The idea of being this thin, even though there is a fact that the media have perpetuated it but in reality it was something that started by certain doctors before the First World War, where they started to promote dieting as a form of being healthier; however, this can also be connected to how the medical industry is fatphobic as well as, in some ways, racist because it was their form of going against people who were not who they considered straight-sized. 
• There was the idea that being thin meant that you looked younger. However, this is something we might have evolved from, because now it is called a baby face or young face when someone has more volume around their face, which shows this as a difference. 
• Even though we have said that models’ bodies are part of the problem and what causes people to go through body image struggles, in this article it says that there is not enough scientific data to back this up. However, even if that’s true, many qualitative studies show evidence to the contrary. People looking at this media have become more insecure, and this might not be scientific, but to bring out a lot of data, one book that I can talk about or use as a source is the book “Beauty Sick” by Renee Engeln, PhD, where she speaks about the way beauty standards affect women. She uses anagrams to explain different women’s relationships and how they kept on evolving and being seen in different ways. 
• The author of this article is actually a professor, or at least was one 10 years ago at CSM. I think it is very interesting that she looks at the history of modeling, how it affects body image, and how it has evolved. I will try to contact her to see if she can be one of my experts. It is very broad and discusses how models have been viewed since the time of mannequins and how they are seen differently today.
• I think that this is a very interesting article because it looks at the research that is out there very critically, looking at how models started and how it has changed through the time but still has some similarities today, as well as looking at the effect that models have had, but also looking at the forms in which the models are treated, not only looking at it from a critical perspective but trying to understand the industry as a whole. 

the way popular magazine publications present ‘the body’ and the standards they promote.  

This was a really interesting post by a student at UAL, and I thought it was really interesting to look at someone researching the same thing I am and her take on the subject. What this student does is look at major magazines such as Elle and Vogue and how they have not only in the past but also in the present shown the ideal body image and how this affects different levels, such as standards of identity, mental health, and inclusion.

This is seen through history: in the early 20th century, there was the idea of white femininity, and this was the beauty ideal and what was shown, which means thin white women, and this is what is in the covers as well as the editorials. In the 1960s-1970s there was the new idea of the supermodel and how they were expected to be super tall and thin and this is relevant because the editor of the magazine vogue at the time Diana Vreeland really promoted Twiggy which shows the new idea and the way that bodies were seen as changing this however had a lot of consequences because there started to be an idea of perfection and this lead to people lowering their self esteem and disordered eating because they started to think they had to look perfect as well (this is not everyones job and should not expect to look like the girls in magazines). In the 2000s, however, there were more conversations about how this could not possibly happen, and magazines began to include a wider range of body sizes and ethnicities. Unlike previous editors of these magazines, Anna Wintour and Edward Enninful wanted more diversity, not just the same girls over and over again.

This is one of the most important fat activists in Colombia: Adriana Convers, who created a persona she uses as Fat Pandora. I started following her after she was on a podcast with the organization I have been working with and researching, El Cuerpo que Somos. I found her work on Netflix telling her story, and it was very interesting, so I included it along with a summary of what she says. 

She says that she was tired of being told that she needed to look a certain way to be accepted and that people normally believe or have a conception that fatness and fashion cannot be friends. She set the goal to show the world the opposite of this belief. She explains that seven years ago, she was tired of feeling excluded from fashion and felt like she didn’t belong. When she saw that there was going to be this new TV show of queer eye she was very excited because this was a TV show she had seen all through her teenage years, and this is a series which at times makes you laugh, but in other moments it makes you feel empathy. She loved how much attitude Jonathan had. She said he wasn’t afraid to show who he was; he wasn’t scared to laugh or speak. He walked in heels and resisted hate with humor and love. This is why he is an icon, she expressed, because he has inspired us to love ourselves as we are. This series shows the importance of tolerance and accepting and embracing each other’s differences. He doesn’t make himself look like a victim; he shows power and voice. She called her blog Fat Pandora because she isn’t afraid of the word fat; for her, it is not an insult. Through her blog and social media, she has created a community of sisterhood and brotherhood built on empathy. She thinks that depression causes more deaths than other illnesses, and she decided to surface her depression and accept herself as she is. She thinks haters are necessary because they keep you humble and grounded. Just like in real life, not everybody is going to like you in the digital world either. What she wants to accomplish with Fat Pandora is for her followers to understand that fashion is for everyone, and that through it we can express ourselves; that fat girls do not need to dress in all black to hide themselves; and that, on the surface, to be happy, you do not have to be a size 2, and if there is no space for you, create it.

Some of the messages she shares here are interesting and relate to my work because, from the research I have done and the people I have spoken to, one of the main things everyone says is that fat is not a bad word. We can’t take away the stigma from a word if we consider it an insult, and I learned this from Tigress Osborne as well. I reached out to her team but haven’t gotten a response. Still, I have learned a lot from her content and experience, especially in fashion, because I found it interesting that, even as she was growing up and had means, she was able to get clothing that was pretty. She wanted to wear it because she had it custom-made. Still, why are there not enough options in Colombia for there to be more clothing all around for different sizes? She has been trying to create new meaning around the word fat and has honestly created an amazing community. 

Giving a bit of context, I hate the fact that I am reading a book with this title and that it is one of the only books I was able to find in the UAL library on Colombian aesthetics, which compelled me to read it specifically, since, from all of my research, the narco-culture is one of the main reasons why the importance of aesthetics exists in Colombia. I, as a Colombian person whose family suffered from the violence and all of the things that Pablo Escobar did, would prefer not to perpetuate information about him; for example, I have never watched a TV show. However, for this study, I needed to look at this book and sections of it so I could see what has been researched and what is missing. 

INTRODUCTION:

• The introduction starts by speaking about a picture which was very important and seen in Colombian media of hippopotamuses who were being hunted or exterminated, “…whose only transgression was to be out of place, a species foreign to yet thriving in Colombia”(pg.1). What this is telling me is how there are environments in which certain people or things are not welcome. The animal was part of a project Pablo Escobar ran, where he broke many international laws about flora and fauna. He wanted his house to have animals from all over the globe; this included giraffes, zebras, kangaroos, and many more, but many of them could not survive the climate and other factors in the area, and some were taken to zoos. However, the 4 original Hippos stayed at Hacienda Napoles, where they kept living and reproducing, which created a lot of fear about public safety. 
• After his death, there started to be more of a stage for him to be portrayed: “What his killers could not imagine was that Escobar’s legacy would change Colombian cultural production in print and on the screen for years to come, promoting the creation of multimedial narcocultura and replicating the narco lifestyle in television, literature, music, architecture, language, fashion, the female beauty ideal, and social rituals, including those associated with death”(pg.3). This is showing the way that even though he died, this gave him a platform. He became even more well known, and Colombia became known for his history. All of the illegal things that he did, including the murders and kidnappings, are still in the light today, and some people are still scared to visit the country even though there has been so much growth in the tourism sector; however, his tombstone is still something people want to see whenever they visit. 
• There were a lot of different players when it came to the world of Pablo Escobar and the culture that he left behind: “…prepagos (high-end prostitutes), and silicone-enhanced trophy women, it would become a defining feature of the nation’s media landscape” (pg. 3). This shows us that the way that women were portrayed as play toys and something to observe and be changed based on the aesthetics of the time is even upsetting and sad that they are called the names they are called. 
• Sadly, this has become a selling point. There are thousands of books throughout the entire industry of Colombia from his family members, mistresses, and people who were his accomplices; there is even one, “…Madame Rochy, who claims to have procured the most desirable Colombian women for her wealthy criminal clients”(pg. 4). How is this something to brag about? How is this something to be proud of, and that you openly talk about it was breaking the law and making women into objects to be used by men instead of them being actual people and being treated as such. 
• There are many reasons why the area of Medellin was so large in the production and market of cocaine, “Of course, there were plenty of reasons Colombians, and particularly paisas, the inhabitants of the Antioquia/Medellin region, quickly took up trafficking in cocaine: their well-known penchant for commerce, the decline of the textile industry in Medellin, and the subsequent economic recession, which increased interest in illicit economies…”(pg. 10). This shows us the reasoning why Medellin specifically ended up being so impacted by the narco culture aswell because it was what they lived off of when the economy started to decline and everything started to change because their economy was based on something that was declining and this had effects on the factthat people needed something else to do they could not just stay waiting for things to change, I dont believe that they took the right path but this explains why Medelin was so important in this context. 
• In this chapter, there is a lot of context about drug trafficking and the cartel. Still, there was not much relevance to my topic and subject, which is why I did not make notes on all of the chapter but on the points that I considered important and relevant.

CHAPTER 5: Mad about boobs

• The chapter in this book that interested me, specifically for Colombian aesthetics and the female body, is “Mad about Boobs” (pg. 166). The idea is that there is no television without having a specific kind of woman’s body: “The truth is that in Colombia there is no television without breasts. Television has brought home the narcotaste, silicone, and the money ethic” (pg.166). This really tells me that there is a stereotype in the Colombian media: a certain body is seen as the norm. It is important to think about the people we admire in this medium; specifically in Colombia, for example, finding influencers who show a different body type has been a struggle, and it’s something I need to look into further. “We the bandits would fall for tits and ass, we used to marry mafia dolls” (pg. 166). Why are they considered mafia dolls when they were the ones who created them? They were told that they needed to look a certain way to have a certain life, and it is so extreme that there are even girls who are television presenters, and doctors ask them if they want any free surgeries or anything in that style. This is something that I also saw in a personal interview with a man in his 70s in Colombia called Julio Toro, who told me that the problems with body image in Colombia started with the doctors wanting to make a fortune and doing it through this.
• “The iconography of the Escobar brand, of exacerbated visibility and an unlimited power of consumption, presupposes a constraint influx of female groupies whose sheer number and anonymity only shore up the narco’s cachet” (pg. 166). This shows the idea that power, since this was the form of money and power at the time of Pablo Escobar, was to show one could afford the surgeries and not only that but also the idea that the more beautiful and perfect your wife or woman looks, the more powerful you are as a man. 
• “The epithets attached to these girls – CDT(“carne de traqueto”, loosely translated to narco meat [Colorado Grisales 103]), muñecas (dolls), and prepagos…” (pg.166) This shows me how women were seen as objects. Men almost always surrounded them, and men gave them their names and value. It was all they could do, and this was just the way that the world was. 
• “…go-betweens responsible for the steady supply of adolescent virgins for the patron, would store ‘fresh meat’ for his entourage in different houses across Medellin” How is this somethignt hat was socially acceptable this young girls were used for their body and were probably not even given a choice there is actually a song that used to play in Colombia called Pablo Escobar which I just thought of where girls were invited to his house and if they said no they were threatened that their entire family was going to get killed and that even if they were dead they would revive them and kill them again. 
• “While they could afford to buy almost anything, underprivileged (and privileged) youth could join in the fun only if their attractiveness simulated the narcos’ desire and sense of self-worth” (pg. 167). This is where the asthetic and pressure I believe originally comes from because at the time I would asume that it was cool or nice to be one of the women who were sutounded by this men and that they could take them on trips and give them money that nothing else could which leads to the assumption that all of the girls who wanted to be a part of this life were looking at the main girls and trying to replicate their look, “The idealized look included hyperbolic voluptuousness with an exaggerated bosom, which, in accordance with the notions of the postmoder instability of ‘truth’ and ‘reality’, did not need to be authentic. Narcos customarily bankrolled plastic surgeries to create an experience straight from Baywatch, whose richly endowed women were epitomized by Paela Anderson. Soon enough, as Roldan puts it, the narco taste for excess and artificial enhancement spilled over to society as a whole:’Pert models with busting decolletages and reinforced rear ends touting everything from beer to lingerie intrude as constant reminders of the feminine ideal the concaine trade fashioned into a societal norm from plastic surgery’(“Colombia 179”)”(pg. 168) This is really somethign to look at because there si specifically one word that is used which is excess and I can connect this to my reading and research about fat phobia and African body archeotype and what this makes me think is that they are doing the same thing in the assumption that bigger as in breasts and plastic surgery means more consumption which is not necesarily true. Of course, there is more consumption because there is a payment for a specific body size; however, it is a personal choice of an aesthetic which shows an election and a choice. Being a “narco doll,” as they were called earlier, became the norm, and people wanted to fit into and aspire to it because of the trend, even though it wasn’t part of their reality before. 
• There is more information when it comes to this aesthetic: “…credits the linkage of trophy women and narcos to none other than Pablo Escobar…’He was the super rock star of the day. Anything he did became that big and lavish…very narco aesthetic, which has spilled beyond the drug trafficking milieu, had its origins in the capo: ‘Escobar liked his ladies, and he often liked them ‘operadas’, or [aesthetically] operated…example to follow for those who had the means to do so. Pablo Escobar made [aesthetic surgery] more socially and culturally acceptable…He almost made it unacceptable to not change’” (pg. 168). This shows us the level of power he had. People ended up following his example, and it became the standard. It became so much of a standard that girls who are graduating high school get their breasts done for their graduation presents and get their nice jobs for their 15th birthday. It has become a culture and society so obsessed with fitting into the aesthetic standard that it is scary not to fit into it. There is extreme ostracism for those who do not change themselves; for example, there is the saying to shoot their beak to look better, but never under the idea of health and wellness, but under being embarrassed about looking a certain way with their body. 
• There is a very famous novel and Telenovela called “Sin tetas no hay paraiso,” which translates to without boobs there is no paradise. When they asked the author what the inspiration for this novela was, this is what came up: “Gustavo Bolívar Moreno recalled his encounter with the fourteen-year-old Catalina, who approached him while he was working in the city of Pereira. She wanted to know how to become an actress so she could afford breast implants from a competent plastic surgeon, which would in turn secure for her a powerful sugar daddy” (pg.169). This shows that people aspired to accomplish this. They wanted to do it, and they thought it would bring them a good life; he wanted to bring to light how bizarre he thought it was and how he could bring it to life. 
• “…Young Colombian girls who aspire to narco glitz – Even if only as prostitutes with fake breast”(pg. 170). This shows me that there are girls who aspire to be this. There is a large amount of inheritance that we get from narco trafficking and the business in general. Still, I find it sad that this is something young girls aspire to be. I understand that this is not all young girls, and many of them have other aspirations, but the thought that this is all they think they can do with their lives is very sad. 
• “Tackling in a single story the subjects of underage prostitution, obsession with beauty, and loose morals opened up a can of worms for sin tetas, earning the book enormous popularity and criticism at the same time”(pg. 170). This is a book that got a lot of criticism, and there was the issue that where it was set was seen for a long time as only this, and that is scary because having a place only be represented by one story is ot just sad, but it is almost a prejudice that they have to deal with. 
• “The venerable Spanish proverb ‘tiran mas dos tetas que dos carretas ’ (loosely translated as ‘A pair of breasts pulls harder than two wagons’) does not fall into Bolivar’s assertion of women’s sexual power, particularly when and if she happens to be well endowed”(pg. 173). This shows how much importance and power are given to women and their appearance. If this is a teaching you have grown up with your entire life, it’s hard not to think your value is in your physical appearance and that if you don’t look a certain way, you won’t get anywhere in life. 
• “True Catalina’s new breast ensure her luxurious future, but, in satisfying her adolescent dream, she simply transfers her voracious consumer appetite to the next signifier”(pg. 181). This makes me think about young girls who are chasing a weight or a goal, and the second that they reach it, they start thinking that they need to lose more and they are not happy with it, so they are always thinking about what comes next and never truly being happy about what is going on. 
• “Having grown up accustomed to believing that her enhanced body will guarantee success, the heroine becomes detached from reality and certainly from her roots, alienating her childhood friends and even Marcial with her growing demands”(pg. 181). The same thing I said above applies: this belief or thought becomes a given, and it leads people to focus on aesthetics instead of other things in life that I consider more important. For example, one thing that comes to mind is that when I was having a lot of struggles with my eating, I remember I was sad and thought no one loved me because I was fat, and a close friend asked me if I seriously thought that she was going to like me more or love me more if I was thinner. I answered yes, ashamed, because that is what I thought at the time, and it not only made me sad but also made me realize that my beliefs were very strong and that I had to face them head-on. 
• “…chauvinistic approach to women and the shameless exploitation of the female body, which has no function other than the decorative, testing the spectators with nudity and female curves”(pg 192). This was a criticism of the TV novel; however, I think it is extremely hard to look at this because I have always been told that we need to understand the past so we don’t keep repeating it. Since the Narco time in Colombia is such a taboo subject and we are not taught about it, we are just told to ignore it and not do the same things; some patterns can grow and lead to different situations, and that is why it is hidden. 
• Apart from all of the ideas above, there was also a large issue with this new telenovela. It was the new idea that this city only has two things, which are hit men and prostitutes, and to be fair, this is far from the truth, and media such as this only exemplifies and makes information worse when there are heavy subjects. For example, this region is known for coffee production as well as agronomy and textiles, and this TV show made it seem like that was all there was; however, this is something that happens in Colombia a lot, especially when it comes to telenovelas. 
• I also looked at the biography to find relevant information or sources for the rest of my investigation, and even though there were a few, the book mostly focuses on Pablo Escobar and the effect narco-culture had on Colombia. At some point in the chapter, the information about body image stopped, and it shifted to the author’s moral responsibilities and the characters he portrayed, which left me with very little information in that part. 

Pobutsky, A.B. (2025) Pablo Escobar and Colombian narcoculture pobutsky, Aldona Bialowas. University of Florida Press. 

https://www.conexionsabana360.com/historias/desafios/trastornos-alimenticios-en-colombia-historias-reales-y-un-sistema-ausente

This is an article I found about a Colombian media enterprise, and the title was very provocative but also extremely relevant. There is no direct English translation because it uses a lot of Spanish vocabulary. I did my best to make it as close a translation as possible. 

• In t furtherhis article there is a following of young women called Catalina, Daniela and Merari and their personal experiences with their eating disorders and the first image that comes up is of Catalina measuring her wrist every morning with her other hand to see the amount of extra space that she has been able to create she had severe symptoms with running 6km at 4am and going to work out more at 5am and then not having eaten properly the night before. While she was in line at the school cafeteria, she heard some of her classmates talking about another girl and saying she got fat during the break because she had let herself go; even though this wasn’t a comment about Catalina per se, she took it to heart. After this, she starts to open up Instagram and starts seeing what is out there today, which are unreal bodies, comments, and likes that have become a form of currency, and through all of this, her illness continues to grow and become stronger. 
• In Colombia, one out of 5 young people have symptoms of Ed’s as part of their day-to-day lives, and 8 out of ten never make it to a doctor’s office to get help. They call it a small epidemic because in Colombia, there is a belief that it is a stubborn childhood thing. 
• For years we have been told that ED’s have nothing to do with vanity, but in reality we have to start questioning this. It is not vanity of the individual, but the author believes that it is collective vanity which has been fabricated through word of mouth but also through algorithms, publications, and comments that talk about the ideal body, which is a form of romanticizing the extreme thinness that we are seeing today. It is not just teenagers wanting to fit in; it is a world where this has become the standard to follow. Society has taught us that there is no room for bodies that look different. 
• Daniela is a 23-year-old woman, and she lived the struggle because she knew most of the pictures and media out there were edited. However, she still felt she needed to meet that standard to have any worth as an individual (why is our body or our appearance part of our worth?). Merari, who is 24, remembers that at age 12, a family member, after commenting on her appearance, recommended she have a couple of cosmetic procedures done, and that she was helped at different medical institutions while she was expecting to receive help. Their concern was just your fat, even though it was a much greater problem, and this is a form of violence (however, this is something that we have normalized in Colombia; everyone has an opinion and they feel it is their job to share it; no one can just stay quiet). (Even if they think they are being nice, I had this experience when I was visiting a friend in Barranquilla, where I had never been, but we went to an event where we ran into a lot of people and friends of her mom’s, and their reaction was to tell her how thin she looked, that she looked amazing, and I could tell she felt uncomfortable; she did not want people to comment on her body, but it is our normal no matter how much we try to change it. My question is: will there ever be a point when people no longer comment on others’ bodies, or is that an impossible hope? 
• The numbers about how little information is out there can be seen in the fact that less than 20% of young people who suffer through symptoms get specialized treatment. A nutritionist consultation is around 150,000 pesos, and one with a psychiatrist is 300,000; for people who actually make it out of this illness, it is a luxury. Daniela speaks about how she looked for help after having a health scare at her university but had to leave this behind because the therapy treatments were just too expensive. 
• There is a law in Colombia called 2560 however there are some gaps that include this, this is a law that tries to help with mental health services however there is no direct mention of eating disorders and the help that is needed for this, there needs to be a specific focus on this (as I have said in other blog posts the treatment is the same one they give alcoholics and drug adicts) Paola who is a nutritionist said that the problem is not just social media but the fact that ones entire life is made to loose weight if you eyxcersice it is to loose weight, if you eat healthy it is to loose weight. We have made well-being an obsession about a size, and this makes it easier for people to fall into eating disorder issues. The mirror becomes an enemy that always shows us where we are not good enough, and negative thoughts about one’s body are like social media notifications that can’t be turned off. The algorithm is not your friend” (When interviewing a young girl from Colombia who is 23, she feels as if it is based on what side of the algorithm you are in and how you feed it because she feels as if her algorithm is about accepting your body, but there are other extremes; this is something to look into as well). 
• One of the main questions that is posed on the inside of the article is the fact that we have the stats, we have the numbers, and the possible effects it might have on other people; however, we still try to minimize it by saying it’s life and it’s all vanity, but narratives and messages that we send out into the world such as this make things much worse and give out a message of people not needing help. 
• A lot of people assume this is something that happens in one’s teenage years. It is something people think they will grow out of; however, this is not reality at all because we have created “an entire system that is obsessed culturally with impossible standards and an appearance of trends that ends up being an illness.” This leads us to ask: if we deleted a picture on Instagram because it didn’t fit the standard, we should take care of our brain the same way we take care of our size. 
• The toxic fitness culture (this is a huge issue in Colombia and you can see it just by speaking to normal people it is normal for a child to do more than 3 hours of exercise a day because there is the feeding of the line that you always have to keep your body moving) this is a game no one will ever win because you are always chasing the imaginary perfect body however even though this is an issue and people understand this there is the fact that the health cares system in Colombia does not have prevention campaigns, no easy way to get early diagnosis and no teams that work in interdisciplinary ways. What should be a right to health care is turned into a luxury (this is what I have been talking about in my positionality statement because even though I have suffered with my body image and eating disorders, I have had access to pay for all the different treatments and programs, which is not something everyone has access to, and there should be different forms to make this accessible, such as it is in other countries of doctors I have spoken to).
• During this article, at the end, different things are spoken about; for example, there is the relationship between the collective and the intimate, and this is what truly makes everything uncomfortable, such as the fact that Catalina is still measuring her wrists. Daniela still remembers having passed out in the middle of her university, and Merari is still pissed off at the doctors who did not listen to her, and what is scary is that these are not rare cases; there are many more. The writer of this article wrote at the end that she was a victim of an ED, and while she understands that it’s an illness, she makes note of the fact that it is born out of vanity of wanting to fit into the standard. It is a trap to try to find the impossible.

This article really makes me think because we treat it as isolated incidents, but in reality the pressure around the body in Colombia is very strong. It is not easy to fight against, given that we are all put into this little hamster wheel where we are trying to fit into a specific body size and fit in. – This is my own experience, but I always tried to fit into the society of my town in Medellin, and I never truly could. It was a mess for my self-esteem because I was always looked at as different, but that difference is seen as bad, and in reality it is just different. Everyone tries to mask something about themselves, which is important to consider as we look at how people can break out of the mold without feeling like failures. (This is not a part of my investigation; it is just a thought that came to mind while I was reading this article).